I keep my blog as a personal record of what I'm up to, which might be seen as working towards "An elegant sufficiency, content, retirement, rural quiet, friendship, books, ease and alternate labour, useful life". I'm certainly not there yet. There is quite some way to go!

Sep 27 A child of the Autumn

Arriving home after a couple of weeks away, we were greeted by the usual pile of post. Most of it went straight in the recycling but one envelope caught my eye and I hung onto it.

With an October birthday, Autumn is “my” time of the year, but during one of those wardrobe colour sessions with a very talented counsellor, I think I was heard to say that if I turned out to be an Autumn kind of person in terms of colour, I’d give up. Googling images of Autumn just now produced the usual selection – all traditional leafy pictures in a range of orange, browns and yellows.

You see my primary school uniform was brown and primrose yellow and I hated it from the moment I saw it. I was a Brownie too, so even when I wasn’t in my school uniform, I still couldn’t get away from those awful colours. On going to grammar school, I was glad to leave it behind but it was only a slight improvement, for that school uniform was maroon. Why couldn’t we have navy blue or bottle green like everyone else?

Back to the National Trust Autumn catalogue which was in the pile of post, though. Rather different from the cliched countryside images I’d expect to see on their publications, isn’t it? Not a speck of brown and yellow in sight. Following through to their website, with “designs inspired by untamed heathlands and moody landscapes”, I found several things I quite liked. Bravo National Trust for catching my eye with something a little different from the norm – or did I just fall for their device to capture a new audience?

Anyway, my eye was attuned to this alternative Autumn palette as I caught up with a few favourite blogs, including Lia Griffiths whose palette of plum and saffron also appealed to me. Well, students of colour theory would immediately identify the complementary colour scheme going on there and wouldn’t be surprised that it works so well. But yay! no orange!

The BBC website had a section on Autumn poetry, illustrated with photographs including the one above. Most were the usual leafy landscapes, but this one appealed to me, in spite of the yellows and oranges because they are offset by the navy blue.

Perhaps I’m finding that I am an Autumn girl after all?

Because although I still wouldn’t wear sunshine yellow or marmalade orange, I do wear citrine and purple and perhaps this year, I could be tempted by that deep teal blue?

How interesting is it to observe these colour trends change? And having noticed it, I find it fascinating to see how it all falls into place.